AfriGeneas Free Persons of Color Forum

I was browsing through your website of free african americans and thought of the BROWN name. I remember watching the documentary "African-American Lives" and one of the ancestors of Professor Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot was a man by the name of Dixon Brown Jr., the son of the same Dixon Brown Sr. who was born in 1745. So it looks like you were able to get her tree back into time even further. It still boggles my mind that their were free blacks that far back into history and they have living breathing descendents. Genealogy has taught me sooo much about history and helped clear assumptions that I've always had about the history of people of color in america. One of those assumptions was that ALL black people were slaves and that slavery was always in the south. But over the years, I know better. I wonder if Sarah Lawrence knows about your website? I think she'll be interested in her BROWN ancestors from Virginia. As far as my folks, I had free ancestors in the Louisiana territory going well into the 18th century. My MASSE branch was free in Southwest Louisiana by the 1760s!